Following each game of the Flames-Canucks series, Thomas Drance will be providing his post-game takeaways for sportsnet.ca. Follow him on Twitter @thomasdrance
VANCOUVER–Less than a year removed from making headlines when he couldn’t do a pull up at the NHL Draft combine, 18-year-old Calgary Flames forward Sam Bennett decisively out-battled a veteran NHL defenceman in Kevin Bieksa at the net late in the third period of Game 1.
With a veteran’s strength and savvy, Bennett got inside position on Bieksa and screened a Kris Russell point shot that drifted, unseen, past Eddie Lack and into the back of the Canucks’ net.
It was a goal that took home-ice advantage away from the Canucks. It was a goal that put an exclamation mark, maybe even a 100 emoji, on a stellar performance from Bennett in his Stanley Cup Playoffs debut.
STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS: | Broadcast Schedule
Rogers GameCentre LIVE | Stanley Cup Playoffs Fantasy Hockey
New Sportsnet app: iTunes | Google Play
“It was everything that I dreamed it could be,” Bennett – who spent the day in faux-suspense over whether or not he’d even play on Wednesday – told reporters following the game. “It was so much fun out there, so fast. To get the win in our first playoff game? It felt amazing.”
It looked amazing too.
In a game in which Vancouver effectively shutdown Calgary’s top line, Bennett and linemates Mikael Backlund and David Jones got stronger as the game went on. They were out in the final minute of regulation and as Calgary’s best line they deserved to be.
Early on Bennett kept finding ways to elude defenders and take the puck to the slot. By the third period Bennett was mixing it up along the wall, getting inside Vancouver’s defencemen and even breaking up Sedin rushes in the neutral zone.
I guess we might safely conclude that strength isn’t an issue for Bennett after all.
Joe Colborne will steal your lunch money
Bennett set the screen and Russell took the shot, but that Flames’ extended final shift was largely the result of Flames forward Joe Colborne.
“The best player who kind of generated that goal who was not even on the ice by the time the puck went in,” Calgary head coach Bob Hartley noted with a grin, and a hint of pride. “Colborne battled along the wall, he set up two or three great passes.”
Colborne stole the Canucks’ lunch money on that shift, and spent it all on Alf pogs:
Don’t blame the Sedins
They didn’t generate a point and its team didn’t win the game, but Vancouver’s twin brothers Henrik and Daniel Sedin were dominant.
Canucks head coach Willie Desjardins rolled the twins in a strength-on-strength matchup against the Sean Monahan line.
The NHL’s play-by-play data assures us that Monahan – who may be bothered by both illness and a bum shoulder – logged over 20 minutes in Game 1, but it was hard to tell since he seemed to be pinned in his own end of the rink for the entire contest.
Both Henrik and Daniel finished with on-ice shot attempt differentials north of 75 per cent in Game 1, and along with linemate Alex Burrows, combined for nine of Vancouver’s 30 shots.
“That’s usually what happens when you don’t put them away,” Henrik said after the contest. “Danny had some great chances in front and we had a lot of chances too where it could’ve been game over, but if you don’t score there then one shot is going to hurt you.”
If Jonas Hiller doesn’t rob Daniel on several occasions – on a clean shot in the slot, or with a flashy catch on a pointblank slap shot – we’re probably spending the next 48 hours asking how the Flames can contain the twins.
We probably should be anyway, actually.
Calgary may have stolen home-ice advantage from the Canucks on Wednesday night, but if they can’t find a way to hang with the twins at even-strength, then a flurry of goals against is inevitable.
The Flames are simply tireless
Calgary has defied the odds and contemporary statistical analysis all season. Now they’ve graduated to defying logic.
In Wednesday night’s series opener, the Flames rolled essentially three forward lines and two defence pairings. The Canucks, and Desjardins’ four-line approach, resulted in every Vancouver player logging more than 12:30 of ice time. The Flames had five players – three forwards, and two defenders – who played only a hair more than 10 minutes, or fewer.
Despite Vancouver’s rest and depth advantage, when push came to shove in crunch time, Calgary looked like the fresher team.
“The more the game was progressing we were skating better and better,” Hartley noted.
“In the third period we could feel it on the bench and the boys were even commenting ‘we’re coming’ ‘we’re coming,’” Hartley continued later in his post-game press conference. “As soon as Jonesy scored, I felt like we had another gear.”
Looking ahead to Game 2
So what do the Canucks have to do better?
They can probably start with trying to contain the Flames’ plethora of high-scoring defencemen.
“We probably have to do a better job on their D,” Desjardins admitted. “Their D got in the rush too much. They were jumping up and even the last goal we were saying we’ve got to take those points shots out of it. And they got a couple of them through. And that last one, that was a big one.”
It might also be helpful if the Canucks could avoid giving up a steady stream of odd-man rushes, particularly late in a tied playoff game.
“We made a mistake on their goal and then after that we gave up lots of 2-on-1s,” said Henrik Sedin. “We said before the game that it’s something we had to look for, but we have to be more focused on the stretch pass.”